More than half of Latin Americans deported from US to Congo are now back home

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - More than half of the 15 Latin Americans deported in April to Congo under the Trump administration's widely criticized crackdown on migrants have returned to their countries of origin, the Congolese government and one of their lawyers said Friday.

U.S. immigration judges have ruled they were likely to face persecution back home.

Congo is one of at least eight African nations with which the U.S. has struck third-country deportation deals.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say. Immigration lawyers said the administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries.

Alma David, a U.S.-based attorney representing one of the 15 migrants, said eight deportees have returned to their home countries in recent weeks.

Her client, a Colombian woman who had described her conditions and uncertainty in Congo in an interview with The Associated Press, currently remains in the central African country, she said.

Also still in Congos is fellow Colombian, Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata, despite a federal judge ordering the Trump administration last month to bring her back to the U.S. She was deported to Congo even though it had refused to accept her because it could not care for her medical needs.

Four Peruvians and three Colombians returned home earlier this week, assisted by the International Organization for Migration, a U.N.-affiliated agency, David said.

They returned via the IOM's Assisted Voluntary Return program, in which the IOM covers travel costs and logistics for migrants who consent to go back to their home countries, as an alternative to forced deportation.

The lawyer said the migrants had been granted protections against removal to their home country by U.S. federal courts, which ruled they were likely to face persecution if they returned.

"The fact that they chose to return there anyway raises serious concerns that they likely felt backed into a corner because no viable alternative was presented to them," David said.

The IOM has said assisted voluntary returns are "strictly voluntary and based on free, prior and informed consent."

A Colombian man returned to his home country on his own in recent days, David said.

"These developments confirm the strictly transitional, temporary, and time-limited nature of this mechanism, as announced from its launch," the Congolese government said in the statement. "Further departures will take place shortly as part of the implementation of the arrangement."

The announcement comes on the same day as rights lawyers filed a case against Equatorial Guinea before Africa's top human rights body, accusing the central African nation of forcing deportees from the U.S. back to their home countries in violation of their rights..

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Associated Press writer Saleh Mwanamilongo in Bonn, Germany contributed to this report.